


Subjectivity

by SimplexityJane



Category: Red vs. Blue
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-07-10
Updated: 2014-07-10
Packaged: 2018-02-08 06:40:58
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 859
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1930542
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/SimplexityJane/pseuds/SimplexityJane
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Carolina wonders if Tex was really her mother, or just a shadow.</p><p>She was probably the latter.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Subjectivity

**Author's Note:**

> This takes place after Church and Carolina leave the Reds and Blues.

Carolina’s mom wasn’t there much when she was a kid.

She wasn’t there, so it’s up to Carolina, and Dad (the Director, part of her insists, the larger part, because it isn’t like they’re _close_ ), to piece together what she was like after she’s gone. Carolina’s seen all the vids, her and Mom at her first birthday, Mom blonde but with the same face shape, the same curl to her mouth that Carolina has; Mom and Dad celebrating an anniversary, on leave, Dad smearing cake on her face and actually _joking_ ; Mom playing a stupid, addictive game, a frown of concentration on her face that vanishes when Dad kisses her cheek; Mom sparring with some young guy, kicking him to the floor and standing, proudly, her foot on his knee.

Mom was a bit of a badass. Carolina likes to think it runs in the family.

(What really runs in the family is the _terrible_ taste in men. Carolina somehow falls for _York_ , and he gives her a _lighter_ for an engagement ring. It can’t be worse than the Bunsen burner Mom got.)

It isn’t until later that Carolina really thinks about it. After the Director asks for her gun and Carolina walks out of there with vids of a dead woman’s last day on Earth, after Epsilon finally _gets it_ , why Carolina was hurt the most by his manipulations, she thinks about Agent Texas, who was a shadow of her mother that Carolina hated on sight.

It should make her ashamed, maybe, that she hated her and not what was happening to them. It doesn’t, because for all that she hates him, Carolina knows she has more of her father in her than her mother.

“So, you remember everything?” she asks Epsilon, who whirrs at the back of her mind, and he says, “Yes, and I’d _really_ rather not think about that while I’m napping.”

“Sorry, but I need to ask you something. Agent Texas, was she--” She searches for the words, but they won’t come. “Was she just a memory, or was that what—was that what she was like?”

She doesn’t say her mother’s name, just like she doesn’t say York’s real name. They hurt too much, burning through her chest up to her mouth. When she says their names she understands why the Director kept trying to bring _her_ back.

“I don’t know,” Epsilon says. It isn’t really a surprise; a letdown, sure, but no, it isn’t a surprise, a broken AI not knowing if her mother really came back from the dead or not. “I’m based on his brainwaves. I'm better, obviously, but memory’s a really weird thing. I can’t remember a lot of things about her, stuff I know people should know about their partners. Like, toothpaste. I can’t remember her brushing her teeth, but I know it must have been a routine because I like routines. And I don’t know what her feet looked like. It might be that what was in Tex was all that shit, but I don’t know.”

Carolina nods. They’re sleeping in the middle of a cave tonight, one of an immense network that run on this planet, and it shouldn’t remind her of anything. Something about the way the light curves, though, makes her think of York in that bar, taking that lighter from him and telling him to cut the cool customer act, she saw that strawberry daiquiri.

She can’t remember what his hair felt like in her fingers, except that it was coarse, naturally curly.

“I doubt she was real,” she says. No one can be that perfect, not even _her_. Carolina always thought she was too good, so much better than her without even trying, and that just didn’t happen.

“She was Tex, not Allison,” Epsilon says, firmly, like it’s something important. “She didn’t have the same memories. And no, I don’t think that made her less real, or that any of us are less real because we’re what a mind--”

“Alright, alright, I won’t insult AI anymore,” she says, rolling her eyes. “Let a girl sleep, would you?”

He huffs, annoyed, but he falls silent. Carolina looks at the damp cave, thinks about what would happen if her brainwaves were scanned and copied. Would something of York be born there? Would he have the same fatal flaw that Tex had?

Would he be York at all?

She had to piece together bits of her mother until she had a coherent picture of her. She doesn’t have to do that with York. York was smoky bars and secret smiles, a lighter that was actually heavy in her hand. He was truly _awful_ jokes and innuendos, and a laugh that was honestly annoying, but _so_ welcome, after the sort of hell they went through together (always together). The only thing she’d want again is that laugh, one more time.

Maybe that makes her better than her father, not wanting a shadow. Maybe wanting anything at all is just human.

But she didn’t have to put together pieces of her father, so she knows that for the lie it is.

Honestly, she doesn’t give a shit.


End file.
